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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25999876">burnt gold</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/catalysis/pseuds/catalysis'>catalysis</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Past Kuroo Tetsurou/Tsukishima Kei, Post-Timeskip, fear of intimacy, gray aroace tsukishima kei, past tsukishima kei/yamaguchi tadashi - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:27:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,601</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25999876</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/catalysis/pseuds/catalysis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>is falling in love for the wrong reasons better than not being in love at all?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kyoutani Kentarou/Tsukishima Kei</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>72</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>burnt gold</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatal/gifts">fatal</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this fic owes you its life<br/>------<br/>what it means to love and to be in love as written by someone on the aroace spectrum.<br/>heavily inspired by fatal's <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25872283">wicked fang</a>. not quite in the same universe, but maybe a parallel one.<br/>warnings for language, alcohol, mild blood, mentions of sex, many references to past unhealthy/dysfunctional relationships</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Kei's only ever dated two people. Yamaguchi and Kuroo. They were also the only people he'd ever had a desire to get physically closer to.</p><p>He had wanted Yamaguchi because he was familiar, all soft angles and fluttery touches, and Kuroo because he was sly and cocky in a way that somehow ended up being seductive.</p><p>Kyoutani is none of these things. He is unfamiliar, and rough around all of his edges, and he’s also straightforward and only as confident as he can prove.</p><p>So Kei wonders what's led him here. Thinking about the long, hard line of Kyoutani's body smashing against his to form a double block. Aching from the vice-like grip around his wrist that turned him around so he'd hear a grunted "good game". Savoring the memory of the feral scowl twisting his teammate's face after Kei scoffs a haughty "I know."</p><p>He thinks it must be the weeks of indifference.</p><p>It must be the explosive (from Kyoutani) and frigid (from Kei) arguments and insults that punctuate those weeks. It must be the way in which they’re no longer rivals, but still not quite friends. Kei must be so desperate to categorize Kyoutani’s exact relationship to him that he’s sublimated desperation into desire.</p><p>Kei believes in this so fervently that it must be true.</p><p>---</p><p>Yamaguchi had asked him out in the cool darkness outside of his childhood home, and Kuroo had prepositioned him through a cheeky text message. </p><p>Surprisingly (or not, depending on your perspective), Kyoutani is not that bold.</p><p>He scouts from the top of his defended hill, sets himself on a collision course with Kei’s desire and lets gravity do the rest.</p><p>They finally collide in a dimly lit bar, sticky with alcohol and damp with sweat. It’s almost anticlimactic, in Kei’s opinion. </p><p>The alcohol dulls the crash and quiets the opinions Kei would no doubt voice if he was sober. </p><p>When Kei wakes up in a bed that is not his own, he has the memory of Kyoutani’s fingers and hands and teeth only as distorted impressions lightly singed across the back of his mind.</p><p>---</p><p>After they had sex for the first time, Yamaguchi had been shy, and Kuroo had been insufferable.</p><p>Kyoutani’s demeanor towards him does not change at all. </p><p>Or at least, he tries his damndest to make it seem like it doesn’t. </p><p>But Kei gazes closer. Puts Kyoutani under the microscope of his stare until he shifts in discomfort. And Kei can see the cracks in his almost normal, sharp-edged indifference. He can see them in the barely there hesitation of Kyoutani’s strong shoulders when he pushes past him, in the way that Kyoutani slams ball after ball out of bounds with his eyes fixed anywhere but Kei’s face.</p><p>It's frustrating, Kei asserts to himself when he catches himself thinking about it over breakfast, on the train, in his own bed at night.</p><p>It's just frustrating, Kei convinces himself, because the alternative, that he's hurt, that he cares, isn't a viable truth.</p><p>---</p><p>When he and Yamaguchi fought, it was like the surface tension of a glass of water finally snapping, it spilt over the edges but the mess was easy to mop up. With Kuroo, it had been war, scorched earth and all, messy and slow to rebuild.</p><p>This, whatever's between him and Kyoutani, if it even is a fight, is a war of attrition.</p><p>Kei knows how to pick his battles, and he knows this isn't one that'll end quietly. He knows that, and maybe that's why he does pick it. </p><p>He prods at Kyoutani, with meaner comments and harsher glares. It even gets to the point that the rest of the team is visibly uncomfortable, but Kei continues. Kyoutani has to react at some point, and when he does, probably (hopefully) with the shape of his knuckles seared across Kei's face, Kei will have won.</p><p>When Kei wins, he'll finally get to move on with his life and stop losing sleep. Or at least, this is what he tells himself.</p><p>It does not end how Kei predicts. Instead it ends, much like it began, in a shitty bar.</p><p>Kei's tongue is loosened by the alcohol and he asks Kyoutani, "What the fuck is your problem?"</p><p>Kei expects the growled "you" that answers him.</p><p>What he doesn't expect is Kyoutani to slam his drink down and turn towards Kei.</p><p>The thud of glass against laminate still rings in Kei's ears when Kyoutani starts talking.</p><p>"You are my problem." Kyoutani says these words like they're being dragged through his gritted teeth. "I can't stop thinking about you and your fucking hands and your pretty fucking mouth. It fucking sucks."</p><p>Kei blinks as his brain tries to catch up.</p><p>"I didn't know you knew so many words," is what Kei's mouth supplies when his brain takes too long.</p><p>Kyoutani scowls and gets up.</p><p>Kei grabs his arm and tries to figure out something to say. "Me too," is what he manages.</p><p>Kyoutani sits back down.</p><p>---</p><p>Yamaguchi had tasted like a home-cooked meal, warm and caring, and Kuroo like the first citruses of the season, bright and biting. </p><p>Kyoutani tastes like neither.</p><p>He tastes of the early memory of when his father had tossed Kei into the ocean. The salty wet panic that Kei had gulped down before remembering that he knew how to swim.</p><p>Back then, Kei had struggled to find his footing in the cold February waters. Now Kei struggles again. </p><p>The ocean had been gentle then. Merciful, even. </p><p>Kyoutani is not. He presses Kei hard into the textured walls of his dark apartment. He kisses Kei roughly enough that someone's tooth catches someone's lip and the metallic tang of blood bursts onto Kei's tongue.</p><p>It settles on his palate, burning, or maybe, finally, Kei himself is burning up. He wants so badly for this to be the spark to finally turn the lights on in his chest.</p><p>---</p><p>He and Yamaguchi had sex thrice in their year long stint, while he and Kuroo had twice that in the first week.</p><p>Kuroo had fucked like he was afraid of breaking Kei, and Yamaguchi like he was afraid of breaking himself.</p><p>Those fears do not have any hold on Kyoutani. He hikes a long, pale leg up onto his shoulder and doesn't even bat an eye when Kei digs his heel heavily into his back, an unspoken <em>hurry up</em>.</p><p>Kei presses his palm to Kyoutani's clenched jaw, his thumb against Kyoutani's lips. "<em>Kentarou</em>" he sighs, high and reedy, desperate for a reaction.</p><p>And react Kyoutani does. He snarls. He bites Kei's thumb. He leans down and sets those scalding fangs against Kei's throat.</p><p><em>yes</em>, Kei thinks, <em>i want it to burn</em>. He writhes. <em>cauterize all of my wounds to yours</em>, he wants to beg.</p><p>What falls from his lips instead is a panted "Is that all you've got?"</p><p>He feels the mouth against his throat curl up into a cruel forgery of a smile.</p><p>---</p><p>He had dated Yamaguchi out of a sense of obligation and Kuroo out of a sense of curiosity. He wonders what's fueling him now.</p><p>He wonders if the violent, sensual dance they’re doing can even be called dating.</p><p>Kei asks him one day, "Are we dating, Kyoutani-san?"</p><p>Kyoutani fixes him with a funny glare. He stares for a beat longer before shrugging. "If you want."</p><p>And, surprisingly, Kei finds that he does want.</p><p>---</p><p>Yamaguchi’s love language had probably been spending quality time with Kei, while Kuroo’s was probably physical touch.</p><p>Kyoutani seems to hate both. He and Kei can barely spend more than a few hours together before they’re at each other’s throats, though, admittedly, it has been getting better. Exposure therapy, Kei supposes. Kyoutani also shies away from any touch outside of the rough, desperate clawing of sex.</p><p>So Kei is surprised when he crawls out of bed one morning to the sight of Kyoutani in his kitchen. The coffee maker is burbling happily, his favorite mug is on the counter, and Kyoutani looks to be cooking eggs on the stove.</p><p>Something strange settles in the back of his chest. Kei thinks and tries to categorize this new feeling and thinks and might possibly have thought himself to insanity if Kyoutani didn’t break the silence.</p><p>“You’re out of eggs,” he says, leaning back on the counter. The eggs are plated already next to some slices of toast. When did that happen, Kei wonders.</p><p>He latches on to the conversation, if you could call it that. “I wonder why,” he snarks back.</p><p>Objectively, the eggs are well cooked and well seasoned, but Kei feels like he’s choking on ash.</p><p>---</p><p>Kei had fallen in love with Yamaguchi because he was familiar and always a sturdy home in his life, and with Kuroo because he was a lighthouse in his turbulent second year of university.</p><p>But he hadn't loved either of them for the right reasons. He had loved them as friends and confidants, but he had fallen in love with them only as places and never as people.</p><p>Kei wonders if it'd be cruel to keep whatever he and Kyoutani have up. Wonders if it would be simpler to cut the mad dog off of his leash than to have him tear the stake out of Kei's chest when he realizes that this is all Kei can offer. Love that is selfish and cruel and not quite right. Love for Kyoutani as a deserted island in the middle of an ocean and not as a person.</p><p>"Do you love me, Kyoutani-san?" Kei asks one day.</p><p>Kyoutani's gaze tears right into the flesh of Kei's face, his chest, his throat, but Kei doesn't look away.</p><p>"Probably," Kyoutani finally says with a shrug.</p><p><em>Probably</em>. The word rolls around in Kei's brain. <em>Probably. Probably. Probably.</em></p><p>It feels like victory and crushing defeat at the same time.</p><p> </p><p>Later that night, in the intimacy of his tiny full-sized bed, Kei murmurs another question. "Are you in love with me?"</p><p>This time, Kyoutani doesn't hesitate. "Yes," he says.</p><p>Kei knows that this should feel even worse, but instead Kei tucks it into the hollow in his chest, safe from the precise, dissecting claws of his mind.</p><p>---</p><p>Despite how they differed, Yamaguchi and Kuroo both broke up with him because they got tired of waiting. Yamaguchi had waited for Kei to return the devotion he himself had offered on silver platters, and Kuroo had waited for Kei to put him first, before volleyball, before university.</p><p>Kei couldn’t do either of those things. Instead, he had dug shaking fingers into his chest to try to spark something, <em>anything</em>, in his pathetic excuse of a heart. It hadn’t worked and neither had the relationships.</p><p>Kyoutani has not asked those things of him. </p><p>But he <em>could</em> and that is so much worse.</p><p>Kei is so afraid that it's exhausting. Every time that he wakes up to a sleep-softened Kyoutani in his kitchen, every time that he finds an unfamiliar shirt left on his floor that he washes and tucks into a drawer, he feels fear swell up and threaten to drown him.</p><p> </p><p>One night, Kyoutani kisses him and it's almost sweet and Kei feels panic bubble up.</p><p>When Kyoutani presses him into the mattress, his fingers are gentle, not bruising. He smooths reverent hands over Kei's chest, hips, thighs. But the final straw comes when he brushes chapped lips against Kei's throat instead of scraping teeth.</p><p>"Get off of me." Kei feels his mouth form the words before his brain.</p><p>Kyoutani scrambles off. "You okay?"</p><p>The concern in his tone turns Kei's stomach.</p><p>"No," Kei says, and isn't that honest of him?</p><p><em>What the fuck was that?</em> he almost asks, but he doesn't know if he could bear to hear Kyoutani's answer.</p><p>Kei pushes himself off the bed. He puts his clothes back on as robotically as he can with unsteady fingers. And he does not look at Kyoutani. "I'm leaving," he says, and he hopes that Kyoutani can read between the lines.</p><p>"What the fuck." Kyoutani follows him to the front door.</p><p>"You're boring and I'm bored," Kei says, coldly, matter of fact. His hand trembles on the doorknob. He turns around to gaze somewhere behind Kyoutani's head when he says, finally, "Don't call me."</p><p>He will not fucking cry. He won't, he says, but no amount of belief in this can make it true.</p><p>---</p><p>Kei skips class and calls coach to tell him that he's not feeling well.</p><p>Freed from his obligations, Kei wallows. </p><p>Or at least he would if the banging on his door would stop. <em>Thump, thump, thump.</em> It nearly rivals the pounding in Kei's head.</p><p>Kei yanks the door open before he ends up needing to replace it.</p><p>"I told you not to call," is what he says to Kyoutani's glare.</p><p>"I didn't," and he's right, and Kei hates it.</p><p>Kei lets him in, against his better judgment.</p><p>"I know I at least deserve an explanation," Kyoutani says. And him standing here in Kei's apartment looking angrier than usual, shouldn't make Kei want as much as it does.</p><p>It's not even been twenty four hours but Kei's missed him. It's so pathetic.</p><p>Something vital in Kei <em>cracks</em>. "You deserve so much more." The words pull themselves up from behind Kei's ribs.</p><p>Kyoutani just manages to look even more pissed. "Hey, who the fuck are you to tell me what I deserve?"</p><p>The cracks spread and spread, spiderwebbing into his arteries. "Can't you see that this is unhealthy. I'm unhealthy. I'm no good."</p><p>"You're good enough."</p><p>And Kei shatters. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes as if it'll stop the vulnerability from leaking out.</p><p>He feels Kyoutani shifting awkwardly in front of him. Kei thinks that he would laugh if he wasn't preoccupied.</p><p>---</p><p>They've fixed it, mostly, and Kei stops fearing Kyoutani's occasional gentle grip, and starts leaving things in his <em>boyfriend</em>'s apartment.</p><p>But Kei still waits for the day that Kyoutani asks for something that Kei can’t give. Waits for the day that he'll have to pick up his things and choke on brambled apologies.</p><p>Kei waits, and waits, and waits, but the day never comes. </p><p>What does come is an almost easiness to their relationship. It mimics the indifference they had suffocated in at the beginning, but now there’s a thin layer of fondness buried under piles and tons of vitriol. </p><p>The hollow in his chest fills up in little bits and pieces, so slowly that if Kei wasn’t as fastidious about each thing he allows past his skin he might have missed it. </p><p>Yamaguchi had melted himself into Kei’s heart through sunshine and warmth, and Kuroo had slipped in through some weak side entrance. </p><p>Kyoutani is not so discreet.</p><p>He brings a pickaxe and chips away and carves out a place for himself. He leaves Kei raw and ragged but in such a way that their serrated edges fit together.</p><p>Kyoutani only ever asks for all of Kei. All of Kei as he is: ugly and spiteful and selfish, and nothing more.</p><p>---</p><p>They go to the beach one day.</p><p>Kei doesn't hold back his snickers as Kentarou refuses to wade further out than waist-deep water.</p><p>"Scared?" Kei taunts.</p><p>Kentarou scowls. "It's cold."</p><p>"Aw baby," Kei croons, wading closer. "I'll warm you up." Before Kentarou can retreat, Kei dumps a handful of water onto his head.</p><p>Kentarou splutters for a second before his eyes narrow.</p><p>Kei laughs as he swims away, Kentarou close behind.</p><p>Kei's still laughing when he's pushed underwater. </p><p>The water that fills his mouth tastes like Kentarou.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i am a stem major and this was my first attempt at poetically styled writing. thank you and goodnight.</p><p>---</p><p>leave a comment and i'll reply w a deleted quote from this wip's graveyard :&gt; or yell at me on <a href="https://twitter.com/nyamayachi">twitter</a><br/>
edit: i'm out of quotes, but mayhaps i'll reply w a quote from the sequel wip???</p></blockquote></div></div>
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